Computing clouds are increasingly used to provide computing services to client devices. A computing cloud could be used by an organization to provide computing services to internal users of that organization and/or to external users and organizations. In a conventional computing cloud, multiple computing nodes are connected together in a network, and each computing node can execute a “hypervisor.” A hypervisor is software and/or hardware that is used to create and manage virtual machines. Each hypervisor supports a virtualization layer, and one or more virtual machines can be executed within the virtualization layer by each computing node. A virtual machine could include an operating system (referred to as a “guest” operating system) and one or more additional software applications that provide desired functionality. It is possible for a single computing node in a computing cloud to execute one or more virtual machines, including multiple virtual machines associated with different guest operating systems.
As is typical with computing clouds, specific virtual machines are not usually bound to particular computing nodes. Rather, each time a client device requests execution of a specific virtual machine, a computing node with adequate resources within the computing cloud could be selected to execute that specific virtual machine.
Security is a constant concern in cloud computing environments. If a vulnerability within a computing node is detected and exploited, any virtual machine executed on that computing node could become compromised. This might allow, for example, illicit access to confidential information within a computing cloud.